The Sargasso Sea

Out in the Atlantic, strange creatures make their home among seaweed in a floating lens of warm water

When Columbus reached the deep blue waters of the central North
Atlantic, he thought he was very close to shore. After all, there
was suddenly an abundance of plant life in the form of a floating
algae, which he called, simply, "weed." His sailors, meanwhile,
feared that their ships would become irretrievably entangled in the
stuff.

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Their fears were misplaced  as were Columbus' hopes. The weed 
which scientists ultimately dubbed sargassum, after a
Portuguese word for it  is neither sturdy nor abundant enough to
ensnare a ship of any size. And even the westernmost boundaries of
the Sargasso Sea  a two-million-square-mile ellipse of deep-blue
water adrift in the North Atlantic  lie many hundreds of miles
from the North American shore.

Defined by a floating lens of warm, exceptionally clear water,
the Sargasso Sea drifts, its location determined by the changing
ocean currents that, flowing in a clockwise promenade, form its
perimeter. The algae that riddles its surface is actually a
deceptively lush veneer to a stretch of ocean that is relatively
devoid of life at deeper levels. But even in this ocean "desert,"
as marine biologist Henry Genthe shows us in this tour of the sea,
there is an intricate web of life that has adapted to existence
among the "weed."